The Flower of Evil
by Steffff
Summary: On a forgotten island in the Atlantic, an ancient evil stirs. La Fleur du Mal, an ancient sword with a bloody history, has begun to kill innocents, using dark means to achieve its darker goals. Only the inhabitants of a Stronghold on that same island stand in its path, and they are not particularly difficult to manipulate. Rated M for language and graphic descriptions of violence.
1. Chapter 1

**So, new story here. This one will focus on more obscure characters for the most part - the main character, Guillotine, is from the game Marvel Contest of Champions; other characters involved will include Punisher, Blade, and Dr. Strange, as well as a few OC's. If that isn't your thing, get out. If it is, enjoy!**

A squall ravaged the North Atlantic, whipping waves into a wild frenzy, madly pursuing any of the seabirds foolish enough - or slow enough - to be caught close to it. One such bird, a gull, struggled to get away from the wind, its wings straining, tendons popping. It was headed home, but the storm was nearly upon it. Home was in sight, now, and growing closer, a flat, oblong piece of land only a few square miles in size, sparsely forested, with an ancient stronghold of crumbling stone rising out of the center. It was for this stronghold the gull was aiming; on the leeward side it had built its nest. There it would be protected. But the gull felt its strength flagging, and, buffeted by the fierce wind it began to descend, slowly at first, then faster, until it lost control entirely and crashed, a ball of feathers, into the ocean, drowning mere yards from the safety if the shore.

The squall, too, rushed toward the stronghold, but unlike the gull it reached its mark. Its windy regiments dashed themselves against the high outer walls, stumbled on the cobblestone paths in the forest, flattened one of a set of decrepit straw huts located at the island's extreme end, and then carried on on its journey, searching for more vulnerable prey.

Inside the stronghold, a worse storm was brewing.

Jeannie Sauvage, a young frenchwoman with flaming red hair and eyes to match, sat silently on a large, ornate, and supremely uncomfortable chair at the end of a high-ceilinged hall. The room had at one time been a throne room, where her ancestors, the kings of some island empire, had sat, receiving grovelling serfs, hearing their faint pleas for help and for mercy, and had dispensed judgement. Now, however, it was merely a large, empty room, silent but for the muffled screeches of the wind outside and the faint, tremulous echoes of Sauvage's rapid breathing.

A room for thinking, for privacy, away from the bustling noise inside the stronghold: the murmurs of secret conferences, the shouts of public debates, the clattering of cutlery, and the rending crashes of weapons being swung or discharged.

Across Sauvage's knees lay a large, grey sword with a crimson spine, the edges caked with thick, brown scabs of blood, recently spilled, recently dried. Across her face lay the last vestiges of horror - the horror of seeing evil long forgotten, but this emotion was soon replaced with a grim determination.

The sword's appearance led Sauvage's mind back to a day long past. She was ten, a little girl who lived in this same castle, alone save for her father, an enormous man who was nonetheless disproportionately strong and violent. But he loved his daughter, and she loved him back. He showed his love for her not by pampering her - her large, sparsely decorated bedroom was one of the smallest in the castle, and she had few things of her own - but by pushing her, always challenging her to be better. He was strict but he said that he loved her.

Every night the little girl would hear her father's footsteps caressing the floor in the hall above her room, trying to convince it to stay quiet. He walked to the end of the hall, to the ornate oaken door that always stayed locked at the hall's end, and eventually, after some minutes, walked out again, his steps heavier, quicker, and still (he thought) unnoticed. A door on the ground floor would open and shut loudly. It would be near morning by the time he returned.

One night, the footsteps never left the study.

In the morning, Jeannie awoke. She made her and her father breakfast. He always awoke at nine like clockwork, came down hungry. She liked to have food ready for him when he did - if he had had a long night, and had nothing to eat, he got angry. But he didn't come. She remembered how he had never returned from the door at the end of the hallway and so she climbed, climbed up four flights of stairs slowly and apprehensively, walked down the hallway to where the thick oaken door hung slightly ajar. She pushed it open further, took a step forward, and found herself in a dark, oppressive room. It was empty but for a reddish-brown rug, a plush chair, and a desk made out of a strange black wood. The walls were lined with books - some with French titles, some with English titles, some with titles spelled in strange, cryptic characters.

Her father was there too, there in body at least, but he was quite clearly dead. A huge hole in his chest, and in the chair he lay slumped in, unnatural in its diamond-shaped symmetry, revealed a fire, burning bright red in the hearth behind him. His blood formed a pool on the rug and the hard floor around it, giving the carpet its reddish hue.

All this, all her surroundings, were only noticed later. Her gaze, the first time she was in the room, was drawn inexorably to the artefact that lay on the desk. It was a sword, enormous in size, longer than she was tall but proportionately narrow. It was a dull grey, like unrefined iron, but it had a crimson blood channel, shocking in its brightness. Its hilt was leather. Where the blade met the crossguard there was a ruby skull with glistening eyes. The sword was caked with thick brown scabs of blood - her father's blood. It had destroyed him, and there it sat on the desk.

Unbidden, Sauvage walked toward it, her small bare feet almost slipping in the thick, wet puddle on the floor. She grasped the hilt of the sword - and screamed, because a shooting pain filled her hand and she yanked it away and it, too, was covered with blood, this time her own. But then the blood began to shimmer, and fade, and Jeannie realised that it was soaking into her hand, somehow returning inside of her.

That was when the voices started. There was a great choir of them, a cacophony of voices, each repeating a different phrase. Some warned her of coming danger. Some threatened her. The loudest voices, however, told her how she needed to take the sword and use it to kill and gain power unless…

"Unless," came her father's voice one night "Unless you want to die like I did."

She grew up like this, spending a decade alone in a darkened stronghold, alone except for the dark whispers of fell spirits in her ears. She knew that the sword was a weapon of some ancient evil - she learned its whole sordid history from the voices that issued out of it, following her everywhere she went.

She went often to the room, but she never again touched La Fleur Du Mal. She never wanted to. Not for years.


	2. Chapter 2

The Stronghold Head of Operations, a tall American named Marcus Dean, had been troubled by wakefulness recently. It wasn't uncommon for a man with his background. Former cult member, trained fighter, all the credentials of a mass murderer. Still, though he had often spent entire nights in waking dreams, recalling the innocents he had slaughtered in his younger days, he had never been a schizophrenic, so he found it strange that he was being kept awake by a voices. Not many, just four or five, ("It's funny," Marcus thought, "that I'm hearing voices and my first thought is, 'I'm glad there are only a _few_ mysterious voices talking to me'") all alternating between whispering dire warnings and telling him to "look in the basement."

Ah, the basement, realm of infinite horrors. As a child growing up in a perfectly normal east-coast suburban home, the basement had terrified him because of his fear of the dark, but now, as an adult living in a bizzare fortress with many ancient relics, the basement terrified him because going down there (where extra weapons and munitions were stored) meant he would have to interact with the guard on duty at the basement door. He was no one important in particular, just a guy who everyone found so infinitely irritating that he had been assigned to basement detail where, hopefully, interactions with him could be kept to a minimum.

"Screw it," Marcus muttered as the hour hand on the clock reached for 3. "It's not like I have anything better to do." He descended the three flights of stairs from his combined office-bedroom to the basement door.

"Doug, wake up!" He yelled into the intercom. Doug, the guard, lived in a room directly adjacent, connected only by a two-way intercom and a one way-video feed to the outside world, as well as a 2-inch reinforced steel door. "Doug, it's me, Marcus. I need to get in the basement." Nothing. Marcus grunted in disgust and turned to walk back upstairs when he heard the intercom click on and a faint moan issue from the speaker. He spun on his heel. Maybe, _maybe_ Doug was just pulling a prank on him. He wouldn't put it past him. But Marcus took every threat seriously, which is why he was still employed. He entered the access code into Doug's office door, hoping that the bastard hadn't changed it (and also that he wasn't _seriously_ injured). Sure enough, the door slid open. Marcus was lying on the floor, whimpering in pain. The sleek metal of his office was streaked red, especially where he had dragged his arm up to push the intercom button. Marcus rushed over to him, dropped to one knee, looking him over. Bizarrely, Doug was uninjured, except a small cut, about three inches long and half an inch wide, on his wrist.

"Shit," Marcus muttered. Doug's eyes opened at the word and he grabbed at Marcus with his left hand. His mouth opened, but all that came out was a weak, high pitched whine.

"Shit," Marcus repeated. His hand scrambled in his pocket for his phone. He found it, and scrolled down his contacts, looking for the right name.

"Erin!" he cried, the moment the call connected. "I need you to send someone down to Doug's office _now_. And prepare a transfusion up there. He's lost a lot of blood."

A moment passed, as the Erin's many questions stumbled on their way out of her mouth. Then: "I don't know! He's hurt, bad. Just get down here." Erin was still asking questions as Marcus ended the call. He found the right buttons on the console to open the basement door and as it slid open and he quick-stepped down the last few steps he realized that absurdly, he didn't have a weapon because he hadn't expected this much violence or danger - or in fact any violence or danger.

The lights in the basement flickered on, dimmed so that the light wouldn't be blinding at this late hour. Marcus would've preferred that they be on full brightness, but he would also prefer to find what was waiting in the basement before someone else got hurt or killed. He noticed that as he walked deeper into the basement, as he penetrated further into its racks of guns, both terrestrial and alien in origin; its stacks of ammunition, both small and large; its haphazard piles of bladed weapons - swords and knives and spears, he noticed that the whispers, which at first had been within reach of inaudible, were growing louder and louder.

It was then, after this realization came, that Marcus stopped walking forward, turned to the nearest rack of weapons, and grabbed the largest and deadliest-looking gun he could find.

As he neared the source of the voices, the air began to take on a reddish haze, at first invisible, then, like the voices, growing stronger until his whole world took on a crimson tint. Marcus's pace quickened until suddenly he reached a junction created by four particularly large closed crates, wrapped in plastic. At this junction the voices seemed to be screaming, their once-clear voices replaced by high pitched tones, and all Marcus could see was a wall of red fire. Then, at last, in the space of an instant, a blessed silence fell over. Marcus's vision became clear again, and his eyes were forced to adjust again to the dim lighting. As the weight of crushing relief fell on his shoulders, he heard one last voice fleeing over his shoulder whispering,

"The way things are is not the way you will think they are." Thus reassured, Marcus looked around for anything out of the ordinary. It didn't take long for him to find it.

On the floor lay a young woman, a woman who Marcus didn't recognize. A diamond-shaped hole in her chest, unnaturally symmetrical, confirmed his worst fears. He had only seen one weapon capable of making such a wound - a stab wound. The woman's blood splashed under Marcus's boots as he stepped closer, knelt reverently by her side. As he examined her injury (not out of necessity, but out of an absurd denial, a hope that his initial assessment was somehow wong), he felt his bile rise. Not because of the horrible wound, the likes of which he had seen before, but because of the sheer randomness of it all. This woman was a nobody, probably an errand runner. She wasn't a criminal, or an enemy, or a spy, just a woman who had been in the wrong place at the wrong time. It seemed pointlessly cruel to kill _her_.

He fumbled for his phone again, this time tapping on another contact.

"Frank, could you come down to the basement? I need some help to… well, you'll know when you see it." Marcus slid his phone back into his pocket and stayed where he was, kneeling in a pool of blood, feeling vaguely ill and deeply sad, until Frank Castle arrived.

Years ago Castle had arrived on this island, this Stronghold, not by choice. He had been pursuing weapons dealer Brock Rumlow, looking for a tip on a killer Rumlow had sold a weapon to, when Sauvage mounted a sting against Rumlow. He had escaped, but Castle, wounded in the crossfire, had been evacuated to Stronghold for medical care. He decided to stay for the long haul.

"Marcus, what the hell, it's four in the morning…" Castle trailed off. Finally, inadequately, he muttered, "Ah."

"Help me move the body," Marcus said. He lifted the woman under her arms, Castle grabbed her ankles, and they slowly shuffled out of the basement.


End file.
